NATION: Red Tape for Private Businesses Only...

...Because Those Regs are Too Burdensome for Government!

Introduction: Our employment law firm represents businesses, and not plaintiff's or government entities. Over the years, we have observed that our government at all levels passes laws that do NOT apply to them, but ONLY to private employers. Their reasoning? The regulations are too burdensome for them! Shocking? Hardly. 

Note that I am NOT making the case that these regulations are good or bad. That will vary from case to case. However, I believe that in most cases, the onerous regulations are bad.  After all, if they were good, wouldn't the government adopt the regs for themselves? I am simply pointing out the disparity under which public and private entities operate.

I will compile some examples to try and convince that this inequity exists. Read on, taxpayers...

*****Example (October 2013) Do NOT Pay Congress During ANY Shutdown: Congress (the House and the Senate) should NOT get paid during any government shutdown. Furthermore, they should NOT get backpay once the federal government is back in operation. I think this may end government shutdowns?

*****Example (October 2013) Congress Should Complete Their Own Tax Returns: Congress Should Complete Their Own Tax Returns: Make them go into a room (with food, drinks, and bathrooms) and not let them come out until they have completed their own IRS Federal and State Tax Returns. Let them only get help from online IRS websites and IRS help lines (no special lines for Congress). Tax returns have gotten so complicated, due to the new and confusing tax laws that get enacted every year. If Congress had to do their own, I believe that we'd find tax simplification legislation gets passed quickly. Instead, each year it gets more complicated, and the people have to suffer, through our hopelessly complicated tax code.

*****Example (August 2013) Congress's ObamaCare Exemption: First, the White House  ignored ObamaCare by suspending the employer mandate for a full year, delaying the employer mandate from going into effect on Jan. 1, 2014. Instead, the mandate kicks in on Jan. 1, 2015. How can they take the concrete "effective dates" and change them? They just do, because they just can.

Now we have Congress's ObamaCare Exemption. The Affordable Care Act requires Members of Congress and their staffs to participate in the health insurance exchanges. The reason? to gain firsthand experience with what they have imposed on their constituents. All good so far.

This amendment requiring Congress to participate in ObamaCare was passed in 2009 and the Finance Committee unanimously passed this rule. The chairman of the committee was pleased that Congress had so much confidence in ObamaCare that they are going to participate in it themselves! Still good so far.

Then they found out what they signed up for: A health insurance program for the unwashed masses (that's us, folks). Horrified that they were actually going to have to wallow around in the dirt with rest of us, they realized that this situation could not stand. A fix was needed to elevate themselves above the lowly taxpayer. Thus, another (illegal?) exception to ObamaCare was carved out, this time for themselves and their staffs.

The bottom line: Congress and their staffs will receive (illegal?) extra payments from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) that will run between $5,000 and $10,000 per  person or family. Will we get these same perks? Not in your wildest dreams! Its good to be the King! Read more here. FactCheck.org seems to say otherwise, but the claim here is that Congress will receive extra payments from FEHBP to compensate for additional costs associated with being enrolled in ObamaCare - something that FactCheck.org does not address. This may have to play out a little longer for us to find out what is really going on - if we ever do. Read what FactCheck.org says on this subject here. Look for an update here once we find out more. Stay tuned.

*****Example (July 2013) Detroit Bankruptcy Pensions: The city of Detroit is going through a bankruptcy situation, due primarily to generous pension benefits awarded to city workers in the 1980's. Much of this generosity was tied to overly optimistic forecasts regarding investment gains for pension funds. The city can no longer afford to fund their pension system.

The problem is that public pensions lack the basic safety nets that private sector benefits "enjoy". Pensions granted by private employers are insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. and regulated by federal law. Note that employers pay an insurance premium for this coverage - it is NOT free. Public pensions, on the other hand, are not entangled by such burdensome pension regulation.

You can read more about this in an article from July 19, 2013 in the Wall Street Journal. Good luck, Detroit!

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PERSONAL: Tim's Investment Page

DISCLAIMER: 

If you use any advice from this page, 

then you get whatever you deserve!

No sage advice here - just some interesting investment notes. Hey kids, get yourself an education in investing - it'll pay off for a lifetime. In the meantime, boring pages like this one deserve a beautiful photo like this one (2 kayakers at Morro Bay at Sunset, taken 10/6/2013 at the Harbor Festival in Morro Bay):

I'll start with a financial saying stolen from the "From the Mind of WAAG" page (yes, some things do overlap):

Others-13: You make your best investments (buys) when people are overwhelmingly fearful. (Another version of this is"Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful". Here's an article on the subject: Buffett's Crisis-Lending Haul Reaches $10 Billion. This statement is commonly and frequently attributed to Warren Buffet, the "Oracle of Omaha", considered to be the best investor of our times. Its another version of "buy low, sell high". When others are fearful, that is when you make the best deals, if you have the guts to do so. During the market crash of 2007-2008, we had cash to invest, but were fearful and did not, finding security in our cash - while all of our investments except Gold (GLD) were tanking. If we had followed the Oracle's sage advice, we'd be in a better financial place today. Alas, we felt that being able to sleep at night was a better option at the time).

TW5: Nobody will ever care more about your money than you do. Up until 1997, I used a full service brokerage to manage my puny investments. How naive. A tiny account like mine would NEVER get the attention it deserved. So just a year before we opened our business, www.Waag and Co.com, I educated myself about investments and never looked back. I have not consulted an investment advisor since then, and if not massively successful, I at least understand what is happening with our hard-earned savings, and am comfortable making decisions about them.

I've just started with these, but as I recall my lifelong financial wisdom, those things will show up here.

REVERSION TO THE MEAN (10/8/2013): The best way to predict market bubbles. Its the financial version of "whatever goes up, must come down". It means that over time, things that have become overvalued will eventually revert back to their traditional value. Commonly used in stocks in reference to market P/E's, or Price to Earnings ratio for a given stock, or in the case of the stocket market, the market-cap weighted P/E.

TIPS (10/8/2013): Inflation protected bonds, issued by our very own US government. Never invested in TIPS and glad that I didn't. I like to keep things simply, and was never fully comfortable with what they would do for me in the event of inflation, and more importantly, what they would do for me if there was no inflation. Well, between 1/1/2013 and 9/30/2013, TIPS returned negative 6.3%. Warren Buffet always said that you should never invest in something you don't understand, and I'm glad that I didn't! Inflation is nowhere in sight.

BOB BRINKER'S MARKET TIMER (10/8/2013): I have been a subscriber for more than 15 years, and appreciate his measured advice on investing.

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PERSONAL: The waterman has fallen, the wave continues on (Part III)

Good luck to all the Scuba Divers out there this opening week trying to grab some early season bugs. Stay safe! (don't do anything too stupid! :-)

Dive N' Surf (Redondo Beach, California) held their 37th Annual Lobster Mobster Contest on September 27th, 2013 between Midnight and 9am. I was not a participant this year, as I was out lobster diving in the Northern Channel Islands. However, I still want to share the art for the official Lobster Mobster T-shirt, as it is kind of a final memorial to Bill and Bob Meistrell, founders of Dive N' Surf in 1953 and Body Glove in 1965. The art for the T-shirt was derived from this early photo of Bob and Bill's lobster catch: